Agricultural equipment, such as a tractor or a self-propelled harvester, includes mechanical systems, electrical systems, hydraulic systems, and electro-hydraulic systems.
When harvesting cotton, for instance, cotton from cotton plants is picked by a mobile cotton harvester, which includes a header that engages the cotton plant to remove the cotton from the field. The removed cotton is delivered to a relatively large basket which receives and holds the harvested cotton. Many known cotton harvester baskets include apparatus for distributing and compacting the cotton to some extent, primarily to increase the amount of cotton which can be held in the basket.
Mobile cotton harvesters are often self-propelled cotton harvesting machines which typically come in two forms, namely a cotton stripper vehicle and a cotton picker vehicle. The cotton stripper is designed to remove the cotton bolls entirely or possibly to sever the stalk near the surface of the ground, and take the entire stalk together with cotton bolls, into the machine.
A cotton picker, on the other hand, “picks” the cotton from the bolls, typically by using revolving spindle fingers or prongs. Cotton pickers leave the cotton plant, and unopened bolls, intact, such that a given field is often harvested more than once during a growing season, the pickers making repeated trips through the cotton field as the bolls ripen.
Different types of self-propelled cotton harvesters include a bale zone, which receives the picked cotton from the basket zone, where it is compressed into bales. Once baled, a cotton bale is removed from the bale zone at a handler zone. At the handler zone, the bale is either dumped from the cotton harvester or is made available for pickup by another machine.
Self-propelled cotton harvesters can also include a cab where an operator is located to operate and/or monitor the operation of cotton harvester. The cab includes operator controls, often including a display, to provide the operator with harvester status as well as to provide operator controls for adjusting operating conditions of the harvester.
The cotton harvester further includes a vehicle propulsion system including an engine coupled to a transmission, which is in turn coupled to a drive train, as is understood by those skilled in the art.
To insure that the cotton harvester functions appropriately to efficiently pick, bale, and deliver a cotton bale, most if not all, current cotton harvesters include at least one electrical control system, including one or more controllers or processors, which are configured to provide a controlled operation according to control parameters either provided by the operator or by the control system, or both.
A majority of the control systems include electrical systems configured to pick, bale and deliver the cotton, as well as to propel the vehicle. Such control systems, however, can fail or not perform as intended due to component failures or a reduction in the performance of a component. What is needed therefore is system and method to determine the operating conditions of a harvester electrical system during operation to reduce or prevent such undesirable conditions from occurring or becoming problematic.